But honestly: setting angles or fov by scrolling in the number boxes is VERY uncomfortably. Try to set 75° for both directions . . . to hit it exactly you have to try hard. It was MUCH faster and more comfortable to type in exact numbers.The wite-coloured numbers on light blue background really donÂ´t help it.

Generally: why did you design it that much more complicated in all respects? All the settings seem to be less comfortable to handle.

System 1.6.1 was more straight, more transparent, more intuitive. Actually one now have to change settings in 5 menues instead of one or two to get the same results.

WhatÂ´s the realistic advantage of using the actual system instead of 1.6.1?

I switched from Gtk (branche 1.x) to Qt (branch 2.x) graphical toolkit. In neither Gtk nor Qt I made special things: I use the widgets default look'n'feel. But they are different. I don't prefer one over the other; they both have nice things and bad things. But as I already said, it is possible to customize Qt widgets using CSS. See:

About the problems you have with the general design, a lot of new params have been introduced since 1.6 version, so I have to put them somewhere. And the plugin architecture leads to have a different design: global parameters in previous versions are now plugins params. If you can be more explicit, and have some ideas to improve the GUI, I can try to modify it.

For the spinboxes, again, this is a Qt/Nokia choice not to bring the virtual keyboard up, and I don't know how to force this (if you ear for a solution on a forum or so, I would be please to implement it). But I don't have any troubles to change the values using the arrows keys of the Nokia: keeping the key down increases/decreases the value faster and faster. Click on the key increase/decrease step by step.

I would love to implement timelapse features, but I don't have enough time But have a look arround, in this forum: John made a nice tool which can generate presets for Papywizard, in order to do (simple) timelapse...

Some time back I mentioned that it would be good to have the option when mounting the camera in landscape orientation to be able to mount it with the vertical arm of the Merlin to then left - when looking from behind the camera - rather than to the right. This would allow the lens axis to be positioned closer to to the axis of rotation and make the camera grip and many controls more easily accessible/usable.

Papywizard cannot currently accommodate that.

You said you'd investigate whther it was possible to add a parameter to allow this to work.

Is it likely to be possible?

Last edited by mediavets on Fri Feb 12, 2010 8:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

I realise that you are pushed for time and it's hard to make enough time to implement features. But, If you were to put aside some time towards timelapse, I would happily spend the time helping you in the features/requirements development and also any beta testing and bug weeding out. I'm a director of photography and have time and equipment. I've done many timelapse's (static) but now really want to implement movement with my Merlin head. I would gladly help you-help us, by adding timelapse functionality. I could happily breakdown features into a timeline of importance/relevancy from the most basic to an advanced level, for a working timelapse application.

The DLSR market has gone ballistic and is set to continue. There is a massive market for a working timelapse solution. You appear to be the keymaster

short of begging, how do I (or we, the HDSLR market) convince you to spare some time?

The most important thing with a timelapse application is to get the head to stop, shoot and then move. If the head is constantly moving it totally limits the ability to take long exposures as the pictures will be blurred.

Your application is great, it's also way more complicated than a simple timelapse application.

For the easiest application it would need:

Set start position.Set end position.Set speed. 1-5 based on the heads inbuilt speeds.Enter how many shots.

You don't need to enter yaw and pitch, you could have the application just spread the shots between the start and end. You don't need anything other than that for a basic timelapse application/function to start with.

If you can set a start and and end position and then just enter how many pictures you want to take in that move. leave the calculations for degrees and time and end shot duration to the photographer. That would be it. Just as easy as that.

Later you could add additional positions to be able to set a path for the camera to go in.

The head can do all that, even with the handset it does most of it, but it can't stop/shoot/move/stop/shoot/move.

Right now the html preset function, while great someone made the time, is very limited. Also it appears that the Merlin might suffer from how long it takes to line-up to the correct position. This can hinder timelapses as it's not always the same.

If theres someone out there who thinks this is something they could put together I'd be happy to pay for thier time.

Paul wrote:my idea was to show only that number in very big letters on the Nokia screen to shoot manually a separator pic before I start the pano sequence.

1. Do most cameras allow you to shoot manually when you have a wired remote connected? Perhaps this would demand the implentation of a 'snashot' button in the Papywizard Shoot GUI - this is something which as I recall was discussed in the past, nd which I coulkd imagine finding rather useful for taking test shots to establish best settings before shootimng a pano.

2. What about if you are using a tethered mode for shutter control? I think some (most? all?) cameras disable some/most/all camera buttons when connected in USB tethered mode?

I have almost finished implementing this feature, but still open to idea to improve it.

Andrew, as I made a dialog to show the counter (with increase/decrease/reset buttons to make some changes, if needed), I also added the snapshot button to trigger the camera (need to add a little delay).

But keep in mind that if you are using an external script with bracketing, the entire sequence will be run, as I just call the shoot() method of the shutter plugin. Please, don't ask for a different setting, it will need too much modifications in different parts of the code, and I don't think it will be usefull.

I will also try to find a place for a similar snapshot button/menu on the main window...

A few days ago, someone asked about a way to wake-up Papywizard from an external program, when shooting with a tethered-based plugin.

Could you explain me what you exactly expect? What mecanism do you want to use? There are several ways to make inter-process communications; some are multi-plateform, some are not.

Can't you implement this in the external script? Papywizard mainly call the script, and wait it returns. If the program used don't work this way, it is very easy to use an intermediate script. I think it can receive all parameters from Papywizard, and give them to the program. Then, it can either add a sleep command to wait for the end of the program before returning (an let apywizard go on shooting), or implement a more complex mecanism, like opening a GUI to ask the user to click when finished, or the inter-process communication.